12 month lease 18 months later

Tonight, I will sign the lease for our new apartment.

It feels weird to say "our" because I always envisioned this as my great Seattle adventure. Now it is shared, and that's okay (much less lonely anyway), but I'm not quite sure where the lines are. We wake up and go to work together and come home together and until this weekend (hopefully), we have been sleeping in the same bed. I thought I wouldn't like it. I thought I would get frustrated and miss my own space. Instead I find that I do not want to be alone.



I wrote the date at the top of the page, "FEBRUARY 27". Twenty-seven. Today is the twenty-seventh of the month. Today is another full, numerical month farther. It didn't take long to count. Eighteen months since August 27th 2011. Eighteen months. The amount of time it would take for a baby to be conceived, born, and be nine months old. The amount of time--outside of mother's who won't admit their babies are over a year old and say, "18 months"--known as a year-and-a-half. The amount of time that separates my sister and me in age. The amount of time it has taken for me to get to here from August 27th 2011.

I am 2,587 miles away from the place I grew up. I am 2,587 miles away from the place that he died. I am 2,587 miles away from the person I thought I was 18 months ago. I am 2,587 miles away from Derek.



Sharing a bed is hard, even when it is a full-size. I rolled over the other night, letting my foot slide to the right. It touched Laura's, and she instantly pulled hers away. I moved closer to the edge of the bed, careful to keep my distance.



"Nat," he looked at me with a small, closed-mouth smile, "Come lay with me."

I walked up to the bed. First, I had to move him over. I walked around to the other side and pulled the sleeping pad towards me in a swift tug. His head stayed where it was, and he uncomfortably dealt with the disposition until I could pull the pillow towards me too. He was much to far on his side, so I pulled one of the extra pillows from behind his back. I sat it next to his head pillow so that I would have one too. It was still warm from him laying on it. I went back to his right side and nudged my wide hips between the bed sides and his hips, sometimes nudging him a little farther.

"Nat! Nat! My leg!" He gave a slight panic as his leg started slipping. I pulled it back onto the bed more and continued to settle into the bed.

"Hold my hand." The first few times, I was a bit wary. It just seemed weird, no matter how close we were. I hadn't held anyone's hand in quite a while, unless you counted holding Derek's arms and fingers in the stretches for his physical therapy that we did every day that we didn't forget to.

I reached over and grabbed his right hand with my right. His fingers were cold and stiff, and in the same position they had been in for the past few years with slight exception. His fingers moved as if he were always wearing mittens--together and not very far.

He wiggled his thumb up and down half an inch. "One-two-three-four..."

"... I declare a thumb war..." Sometimes I lost on purpose. Sometimes he really did catch my thumb and pinch it down so hard that there was no escape. Strength has nothing to do with muscles.

It became a thing--when I visited, we would lay in bed and watch movies or talk or I would read to him. It was an easy adjustment. Sometimes, when Dawnna was late coming home (the year before the year of hospital rooms and breathing machines), I would lay with him after I put him to bed--keep him company until there was someone else home to be with him. Someone other than Mr.Moose, of course (with his soft fur and red, Canadian maple-leaf sweater), who, I admit, did quite a good job of comforting him during the night.

"Nat," he looked at me with that same, closed-mouth smile and eyes that always seemed tired, but I never understood just how tired, "Come lay with me."

Sometimes I was unsure  because some nurses didn't like that. Sometimes I felt ashamed, embarrassed, to be seen lying in bed with my cousin.

"You are a cute couple," one of the night nurses said, as Derek and I lay watching a movie. I looked at him and then at her. It was one of those silent nights when he had the vent and couldn't talk, so he just opened his mouth and laughed in quiet, the way Katlin and I do when we are together and laughing so hard that no sound comes out, and we sit clapping our hands like walruses.

"We aren't together," I managed between giggles.

"Oh, are you siblings? You do look quite alike. Twins?"

"May as well be," I said, smiling.



At all of the funerals that I went to growing up, I always remember my mother touching the deceased in a gentle caress--a squeeze of the hand, a light brush against the stiff cheek. Aside from my grandmother's funeral, at which I was four years old, yet I still remember nudging her and telling her to wake up, I had never touched a dead body. It frightened me, and I couldn't understand how my mother could bear to let her skin touch someone whom we loved but was no longer in that shell. How could she bear to stand so close to death?

But I held Derek's hand. From the time we arrived, I went to him. I held his hand. I held his colder, stiffer fingers until the make-up rubbed off the top, revealing a deep purple splotch. I held his hand and watched his face, waited for his eyes to twitch as if he were just dreaming, waited for him to open his face in a smile and say, "Just kidding! You really thought I was dead, didn't you?"

It was a game we played all our lives. Whenever someone walked into the room, we'd look at each other and say, "Play dead!"

Some nights, I would roll Derek over during his bed bath, and when he was facing me again, he would have his eyes closed and his tongue sticking out.

"I'n dead," he would say, tongue still sticking out.

"Uh huh."

"What if I really was dead? What would you do?"

"Go home and go to bed." It was usually around 1am by this time.

"No you wouldn't. What would you do?"

"I don't know, Derek." It wasn't something I ever wanted to think about. It wasn't something I ever thought would actually happen.

But it did. And I held his hand. And I wanted him to wake up. And I wanted him to ask me to lie next to him. And I wanted to follow him all the way to the cold rectangle of missing ground. But I didn't. I only held his hand, and when it was time to close the casket, I let go.



It was different. Different from letting go of his hand to leave for the night, to come back and visit him at the hospital the next day. Different still from letting go just to move to my chair that I slept in on slumber party nights at the hospital. And different from leaving the emergency room where his life had just left him and where the warm feeling in his blushed cheeks would begin to vacate before I even left the room.



2,785 miles sounds like a long way. Long enough to drive from Seattle to Phoenix and back again. Long enough to forget the miles in-between such that the twenty-seventh of any given month feels like the twenty-seventh of that one particular month in 2011. I hated when the year turned 2012 because it was a year that Derek would never see. I don't even know how to digest 2013.

Tonight, I will sign the lease for our new apartment.

I keep pushing it off because I can't believe that this is where I am. That I have a job that I love, that I am on good terms with my whole family, that I live in Seattle of all places (may I remind you I have never been before?!), that I am still pushing forward even though the heavy beating within says "hold back. don't go". 

My great, selfish Seattle adventure is turning into a smash-your-pride-to-pulp-and-see-what-comes-out-at-the-unforeseeable-end-of-the-journey adventure.

Sometimes it really sucks. Like these periods of not writing poems or the nights of going straight to bed after work or the days of cold, dark dampness where my basement apartment offers no warmth or comfort or the hours of confused desolation and wondering if my life in Pennsylvania ever existed,  if there really was a young man with red hair and an underbite and stiff fingers and bright green eyes who called me Nat and Monk and Kalawagachattanooga or clickclickclick or whatever pretend language we spoke for the day. (we once painted styrofoam cups blue and glued them to paper bags and pretended they were an alien life form called the "cupperstyroblues")

Sometimes it's really great. Like the prospect of moving to a new apartment, closer to my friends and to downtown to a place that is pet-friendly, leaving open the opportunity to get a dog and to finally be reunited with my Russian tortoise, Elijah, or the joy of having people that I love just a ferry ride away in a slightly more rural town where we can go hiking in woods that feel like home or the fun of wearing bright rainboots and splashing in puddles singing my invented "Rainboots" song or picking cold, wet blackberries in the bushes along Puget Sound or simply living so close to the pulsing shores of a body of salt water or in the valley between two walls of mountains I had hardly even heard of six, maybe seven, months ago.



I wish I could tell him about it. Every detail. At first, I thought I could. I would desperately write on his Facebook wall, as if he could see it. As if he would respond. But these little blurbs of memories on a blank screen with a flashing text line will have to do because surely I cannot always hold it all in my head.


I'm signing on to a twelve-month lease. Eighteen months ago, I couldn't imagine where I would be in twelve months. And I've jumped around a lot. I'm about to sign on for twelve months. A whole-nother year just like the last. Except entirely different.

The Hunt For: theperfectapartment (jelly beans included)

"It's like an Easter egg hunt," I smiled as we began our trek down the hill. The city was clearly sprawled below us. Even some blue peaked through the clouds. We were looking for a new apartment, closer to downtown, and we wanted the brightest egg with the most candy inside.

Beginning around ten o'clock, we managed most of the hillside of Lower Queen Anne. We viewed a few places, none of them possibilities because they didn't allow pets--a detail that I left for last because I just wanted to get inside--to see what kinds of apartments exist.

The first was perfect: great size, balcony, perfect area, fireplace, bathtub, view of the Space Needle, in-unit laundry. Of course, it came with a price-tag, and dogs were a no-no. Bummer.

But we got inside, so we had a clearer image of what to expect.

Most of the buildings were old and had that funny old-people smell with cracked walls and stained carpets. I was ready to tackle the vintage-with-character sort of place, but Laura was feeling unsure. After a few not-so-likelys, I wasn't quite feeling up to the "character" these old places had to offer.

By around 3:30, we were exhausted. We had stopped for lunch around noon, and then resumed the hunt, each place seeming worse than the last. Nothing on our checklist was being met, which mainly consisted of: allows pets, has a parking option, and the whipped cream would be in-unit laundry, and the cherry on top would be a bathtub. This combination did not exist, and in most places, we could barely get one. Some of them were just bowls of whipped cream and cherry with no ice cream beneath. What were the odds of every place being out of any flavor that we liked?

"I know someone on Harrison, so let's just try there. If not, we'll go home."

"This Easter egg hunt is backwards," Laura sounded discouraged, "Each egg we open just gets worse!"

The "Now Leasing" and "For Rent" signs were everywhere. "We hit the jack-pot!" Call after call--no answer, no pets, no parking, nonono. Some jackpot.

Then we found it--the opposite of what we ever imagined ourselves in. It's a modern, brand new building with many apartments. We stood outside and watched a man walk in with a dog. This is it.

We went for a tour and found that their studios were less expensive and had greater square footage than most of the one-bedrooms we had looked at all day. Free street parking, pets allowed, bathtub, in-unit laundry, energy-saver stainless steel appliances, large bright window. We were sold.

A woman showed us around the building, taking us to the gym and the parking garage with bike storage and the rooftop terrace with a breathtaking view of Puget Sound and the Olympics. A green room full of plants, WiFi common areas, and a grill on the terrace were like the sprinkles on top of the sprinkles on top of the cherries and chocolate syrup.

Needless to say, we are unbelievably excited. We move next Saturday. We are right by a small pedestrian bridge that connects city and Myrtle Edwards waterfront park, a few blocks from Olympic Sculpture Park, less than a mile from the Space Needle, and a mile from Pike Place. Woah.

I'm really nervous to be so close to the busy life, but I'm so excited to dive in, to be nearer to my friends and fun things to see, do, and eat. And with just a few stairs to climb, I cannot wait to enjoy the view!

We feel like we have found the whole Easter basket. Boy, do I love jelly beans!

my Charles Wallace

I just finished reading through A Wrinkle in Time Trilogy. As I moved pagepagepage through each book, I found myself hanging on to pieces of the previous. I hung on to the magic in A Wrinkle in Time and the way that it awakened my imagination, poking at the long unused sections of my brain like the soft and gushy meat in the grocery fridge.

(Vegan aside: despite my meat-free diet, I have never been able to help myself when passing the vacuum-sealed meat in the grocery. My mom always told me not to touch, but it was so squishy and unfamiliar--and to think of its source! And how different it looks cooked. And that somewhere inside us, in a different, but similar, form, we are that!)

I'm still hanging on A Wind in the Door. Charles Wallace is to Meg what Derek is to me. My brother. We could kythe (a form of telepathy in the book) and understand each other in ways that others couldn't. We knew each other's needs without saying them out loud. In this second book in the series, Charles Wallace becomes quite ill, his lungs weakening, the farandola failing to "deepen". All along, all that I wanted was to become Meg, to be taken under the literal wing of a cherubim and delve into Derek's being and encourage his muscle cells to keep fighting the Echthroi, convince them to deepen.

Part of me wanted Charles Wallace to die in the book. I wanted there to be some realism to the fantasy. I wanted to know that even if I could have done the impossible, things would have still happened this way.



On Friday, I fell asleep on the bus. I had gotten up at 4:30am to go to work early, which ended up being much earlier than I anticipated because as I got ready, I soon realized that getting up at 4:30 was ridiculously unnecessary to catch the bus. I arrived promptly at 6:40, and counted down the hours until I could go back to bed.

At 3:30, I made my way home. I sat, book in lap, trying to finish A Wind in the Door when I nodded off. I awoke suddenly. A few seats over, a man was staring at me. I tried to shake off the sleep but couldn't keep my head up. At each stop, my eyes jumped out the window to catch the name of the bus station. I managed to not miss my transfer, and rejuvinated after my nap, my eyes were locked in that lefttoright repeating line like a typewriter's paper roll--so locked in that I was entirely oblivious on my second bus.

There was a sudden turn and sharp incline. I've ridden this bus plenty and don't remember this road... "Next stop, Newell Street". Not one I remembered. I waited one more stop and noticed that we were on 9th avenue. My stop is several stopped prior along 10th.

"Did you already stop at Halladay?" I asked the driver. I was the last person on the bus.

"Yes."

I laughed and stepped down to the sidewalk. Can't be too many blocks. Surely it wasn't, and the sun was unusually bright, especially for my way home from work; I've become so used to leaving in the dark and coming home in the dark. I passed children walking home from school with their parents, and I thought how funny it is to be a child. A little girl cried to her mother about the mean kids at school. That used to be me--how I would cry and whine. What shamefully funny beings we are as children. I thought of Meg in Book 1 and how she would stamp her foot as if she were younger. But we all are that--strange little learners with a developing sense of emotion and very little grasp on why we're thrown into it all.

The wind has been particularly strong. As I walked, my hair tossed across my face, and I squinted my eyes to avoid the chill burn. It was an autumn wind--the late afternoon kind that brings a cold front and fallen leaves.

The only thing on my mind was A Wind in the Door. Why that title? Why Charles Wallace? Why Derek?

The past year, wind has represented a voice. At Derek's funeral, I first learned of the offering of wind chimes to the deceased's family as a token to hear that person through untranslatable tingdings and clinktinks. Dawnna and I would sit on the porch and cry because sometimes, the wind chimes sung without a breeze.

This wind is audible with chimes. It whooos and whooshes like a washing machine. It's the kind of wind that pushes you forward and slams the door behind you.

It's the kind of wind that embraces your tired bones when you're walking, silent, home from work and wondering why Meg can save Charles Wallace but you cannot.

How it feels to grow

I've never felt myself growing older.

Sure, I've grown taller. Boobs have somehow rounded themselves on my chest. I've watched my body stretch and mold into this person that some days, I can't recognize. Aside from haircuts, these changes are slow processes--their existence only seen in new stretch marks or a progression of photos taken several years apart. I've looked at pictures from the past several years. I've changed so much outwardly that I have a hard time recognizing that it could possibly be the same person within. I feel like I'm living the old cat tale of nine lives.

The weekend before last, we went hiking at Twin Falls. There is nothing more pure than oxygen fresh out of leaves.

The soggy, scattered trees welcomed us, and I slowly began to feel myself age--to feel the progression of time. With a spring in my step, I hopped over fallen logs and down along the shore of the river. I pushed the toe of boots into the sand and watched the water dissipate and then return when I removed the pressure. Sand as sponge.

I climbed up rocks and swung along low-hanging branches in tiny leaps. Worldly constraints disappeared in the rush of water and silence of trees. And yet, I took a leap. I jumped down a steep curve in the path, and for probably the first time, it actually occurred to me that I am no longer ten years old. My heels pounded into the dirt without rebound. I could feel my vertebrae tense on impact, and my chest  echoed a heavy bounce. I paused, hands out for balance, and felt the moment. I'm not a lanky, flat-chested little girl with endless energy, strong joints, and an absence of fear.

But I once was.

And somewhere, I still am, but certainly not on the outside. I saw myself reflected in the trees. As the old, rotting stumps stood firm to their roots, new saplings simply grew over--aging additions, transitions to new life.

I saw myself in these plants, but I could have stared at those trees all day and still not figured it out--am I the rot, the root, or the new-growing trunk?

Then we came across this.

I imagine it must be what following Jesus is like. A slow transformation that takes over your whole being. Your new sources are the roots that dig directly into your skin. The old pieces of you crumble away as a new creation takes form.

I've talked to a few believers about how they knew they wanted to follow Jesus. One person described it to me as, "I was really struggling and couldn't grasp the concept of Jesus. Then, one day, it changed."

"What happened?!" I asked, eager for the big response.

"I found Jesus!" He was so enthusiastic about it, but his answer let me down. I was no closer to feeling that "aha" this-makes-sense solid notion.

It takes a long time for a seed to become a tree, but if you leap, land, and pause, you can feel the roots stretch.

________________________________

And in it all, I think of a poem from Rilke's Book of Hours:

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one

but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

I've been circling for thousands of years

and I still don't know: am I falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

Like a Wagon Wheel

I was walking to pick up my car from the shop. I had my headphones in and flicked my thumb up the small screen of my iPod. What to listen to...I paused on Old Crow Medicine Show. Why not?

Of course, I was naturally inclined to scroll  downdowndown to Wagon Wheel. Play.

_______________________________________

I am sitting in the Beehive, listening to Dylan August play at a fundraiser coffeehouse. Dr. Amy sits next to me and makes a small joke about the song. I nod my head, and Jonnell hums in smiles.


I am driving from Pennsylvania. I lightly hum along with the car stereo. It is near midnight on Christmas day, and the dark hills of Kentucky swallow me in their climbing curves. Katlin is sleeping in the backseat as my mother sits next to me, trying to keep her eyes open.


I am walking around the house. Sam is walking around the house. We are getting ready to go hiking. As we pass each other, our bare feet on cold tiles, we don't even look at one another; I hear him murmuring the words as I let the melody hold in my throat.


I am sitting in a bright, familiar dining room. Martin plays guitar. I thwack terribly on a pair of spoons. Elias pops a shaker in the air. We don't all agree, but we are smiling. Kim and Julia join harmonies. We can feel the summer clouds pumping humidity into the windows.


I am sitting around a campfire in Northern California, singing with my sister and now brother-in-law. We try our best to harmonize, but the notes seem as far away as the stars that peek through the trees: smoke, fire, song.

_______________________________________

Funny how 3 minutes and 51 seconds can go so far away. I can feel the road's curves, the solid tile, the coming rain, the scent of campfire. Where are we all now?

East to Southwest. East to Northwest. North to South.
People out here measure location quite specifically with the cardinal directions. The streets are lined with signs reading, "No Parking West of Here" as if it were so clear which way that was. My friends here say they can always tell where they are because of the Sound. The Sound is always West.

Arizona, Pennsylvania, California, Washington.
Sometimes I wonder what is in-between. I've driving along the main roads there and back and back again. I've flown over the wrinkled hills and cookie-cutter fields. I know the in-between is there.

Sometimes that in-between has a way of disappearing. I have been grounded in Washington for a bit now, and some days, it's hard to remember that there is a small town called Waynesburg or that there is a big blue house tucked in the woods on the top of a hill in Westmoreland County. It's hard to realize that on that hill, the vine-coated and rusting "Handicap Pedestrian" signs no longer apply. It's hard to let it sink in that in the cleft of the road's bend, a young man in a wheelchair no longer lives. And a tall, skinny girl with short, straight hair, wandering eyes, and itchy feet has grown and fled to a foreign life.

On top of my new hill, Queen Anne, I see mountain and water. The peaks and crevasses never seem the same, yet they are somehow, day and day again. I spend my time going up and down the hill. The wave of my life, undulating in tides of hills: Mamont, Waynesburg, Seattle. Each is bigger than the last, and I wonder when the soft white cap will form a breaker. Which soggy patch of sand will swallow me in high tide?

And those 3 minutes and 51 seconds have taken me farther and closer and re-circling through the patterns of here and there.

I was walking to pick up my car from the shop, and suddenly, the whole world didn't seem so far away.

gogogo

Even the Sweethearts Candy understands.

ticktick

I really don't know where to begin, but I'm exhausted.

Exhausted in the sense that trying to feel full will only leave you feeling more empty, more aware of all that is not filling the gaps. Like the poems that haven't been written. The music that hasn't been played. The blog that hasn't been written. 

I sit here with a glass of wine and tired, heavy eyes wondering what I am chasing. 

I get up and gogogo. I come home and gogogo. Constantly going: the complete opposite of my life not too long ago. I never have been very good at the whole balance thing.

I've been caught up in everything at once. I want to be, to do, to act, to think, to know, to learn, to believe it all. There is so much that I want and so much of that is intangible--I cannot hold faith intertwined with my fingers and think that it will not slip through like sand. I cannot grasp it at all. 

I find my time unevenly distributed between work and church and everything else. Like pie charts that we build at work, the last section can optionally be omitted because it's such a small portion that its contribution to the whole goes unrecognized. But some of the most significant side effects reside in that sliver. 

Is that all they are? Side effects? I have settled in to a life of work and sleep and food and a church that I can't wrap my head around and a god that I cannot meet and the rest of who I thought I brought with me when I packed my car and drove West: well, where is all of that? Did I drop a piece on the bus today? Did I lose it on the street? Has the city pulled me in its stopwatch rhythms of the double-time ticktickticktick that makes time feel fluid, coming and going in Puget Sound's constant pulse?

I think I so often search for contentment because of this imbalance. I want my glass to be just to the top--not too much or I will feel overwhelmed as life pours over the sides; not too little or I will feel a constant yearning and hunger. I think right now, I have a glass in each hand. My left is nearly empty, wanting more, wanting words, wanting color and song. My right is overflowing, never pausing, never slowing, never damming the stream of thought and act. 

I want to be a child. I want to sit down at a miniature table and feel like I belong because my toes just touch the floor. I want to grasp one cup with both hands and be glad when the water touches my lips and not the table. I want to not worry beyond the present moment--no fear of future or past.

I'm sure this is a lot to ask. 

I got a swig this weekend. The other side of the Sound feels like going to the unseen home. Woods, moss, and crispest air welcome me and my second family. 

Right away, the two littlest girls tumbled in the soggy fields. Assessing that it wasn't much to fret about, we continued on. Maybe five minutes later, I was running around with the girls when the ground left me, and I, too, found myself flat on my bum. Gosh did I need that.

I spent the day trying not to think about how cold and uncomfortable wet jeans feel. I was lucky that good company and god-made landscape pull away negative thoughts. 

We made our way along the paths, noticing the many sights the woods had to offer. We stopped at a raised, wooden platform overlooking a bog and sipped tea and munched. I have had Kenny Rogers stuck in my head ever since. 

We continued on to the Hood Canal. I know it's cliche, but nothing resounds serenity like water. Rhythm, wet, the echo of our heartbeats--the one thing on earth we can most connect to because we are that. 

We walked along the water, letting our shoes sink into the soggy sand of low tide. We picked our fingers at the critters that swirled in tide pools, poking the underbellies of sand dollars that lay scattered and stacked like church bulletins in a basket. 

As we started walking back towards the path, we walked by a large rock. 

"Alright, just one rock." It hadn't crossed my mind, but as soon as it was suggested, it became a must. 

After the initial rush of sand began to settle, we noticed the tiny crabs sliding sideways up the sand, in search of their familiar shelter. 

We picked them up. At first, I was afraid to. Sure we used to catch crayfish all the time, but I was never really afraid of them pinching. These little buggers seemed more intimidating. The crabs would wriggle their legs as if they could get hold of the air; they'd wave their claws like a symphonic conductor, but the tune was short. They soon gave in and decided to wait out the flight.

I learned so much from these few simple events.

That if you don't slow down, you'll surely fall, and even the bruise on your backside will remind you to take more careful strides.

That if you constantly fight the air, you'll find that you haven't even accomplished as much as walking on a treadmill: you can't always control the settings.

That if you don't accept your surroundings as the place that you call home, you will constantly feel unrest. 

And I'm still learning.

Yesterday I learned that it's really dumb to pour boiling water into a glass, no less a glass that is in your hand. 

Today I learned that even if you run to catch the bus, run to get to Community, run to make dinner, you will still be out of breath when you enter the race. 

So I'm not sure how I got to all of this. I tend to let the broccoli lead the way most days (thank you, Anne Lamott). But I know that I feel like a thousand sighs will not suffice. I know that I'm not sure how the days are supposed to fit together: it's like I've made each square of a quilt, but I don't know how to match them into a whole.

Phew, I also know that my metaphors are getting pretty out-there. 

There's just so much, and I can't seem to fit it all in just 10 hours of daylight or even 14 hours of night.